Yes, and played more than 20 Visual Novels that I could count, not counting the short ones that is hard to be remembered. Starting from fate/stay night (not the first one,actually. But that's the first hook), and I started to seek more VNs with exceptional stories, and I'm glad that I found a lot. Now, I tried to avoid any H VN if possible, except if the story is exceptional. More than half actually are in H category,but the adult parts are really skippable, afterall. They are even better without them.

tl;dr : Yes, and a lot of them. Since many of them are really good, especially in bringing emotions (due to support from music and art, the main forte of VN)

Would it be too much of a problem to ask what visual novel that was in the link that Kruszer offered? I've played or read, depending on your opinion, several visual novels. I actually wanted to ask about that. Should I count those as novels that I've read? If you reread one with a different character path, is that another read through? I'm not familiar with 999 to be honest. Is that a Galaxy Express game?

It's Shuffle!. The translated version is licensed and available from Mangagamer.com legally along with a bunch of others. The site may have some 18+ content but you have to register to get that I think so the link should be safe.

I'm a big fan of Higurashi, Key, and to a lesser extent Type-Moon, so yes, I'm quite aware of visual novels. Now, have I ever read one? Also yes, although only one. I'm a big Kanon fanboy, so a few years ago I downloaded a fan translation patch for Kanon and bought an all-ages version off of Amazon. At east, I thought it was the all ages version. I don't know whether I bought the wrong game or if the patch simply didn't jive with that particular version, but the (hilariously awkward) dialogue from the h scenes showed up, although the visuals didn't, so I assume that the latter was the case.

I remember hearing that there were legit translations of Higurashi available, so I've been meaning to get around to getting those, but it always slips my cursed mind. Also, I would give my left leg for somebody to license the Key and Type-Moon stuff (especially Clannad and Fate/stay night) for North American distribution. That, or pay money if they do get brought over. The latter is more likely, realistically speaking, but only by a small margin.

Hey, if anybody reading this is new to visual novels and has no idea where to start (and is scared away by the gratuitous sex common in the genre)...

Go check out True Remembrance. It's short, it's kind of profound, it has one of the best fan translations of any visual novel ever and it's free of any of the icky sexual content common to many visual novels. It's even legally free!

I've read two visual novels in the past, but mostly avoid them for the same reasons as yamata above. While my experience is that they can have really good plot set ups, the hard hitting sex scenes aren't my thing. I mostly finished the first because that content is fairly limited, yet even so it's a bit of a deterrent to me for many of those novels to have that in them, no matter how sparsely used it is. :\

Princess Waltz was the first one I went through, and probably the best of the two I've seen with the qualities described above,

Pressing the Ctrl button is too difficult for people who want to skip past the explicit sex scenes, or what?

A lot of the time it's not in my taste either, but I don't complain about it-sex is part of a normal human, adult experience and I'm not going to be shocked when a piece of fiction explores that.

Personal preference on my part, and not all of the VN's give you the option to skip the scenes entirely unless you're replaying it, in my case I put the text on max speed... whatever. Considering they had an actual purpose to the plot other than crazy otaku pandering, and they use it only that way, I give them much higher credit

One of the draws for Princess Waltz was the gender bending it had, but the plot was much better developed that just that element and appeal getting me to stick to it

I'm totally into Type-Moon. My first VN was Tsukihime and, though I read a whole bunch of them since then, I still think that it's one of the best visual novels i ever read. Fate\Stay Night is fine too, but i more like characters from Tsukihime. I still hope that someday some company gonna get license on every Type-moon's VN. You know that feeling when you want to get something extremely awesome just to put it on your shelf?

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Today I just started Last Window: The Secret of Cape West

Lucky you. It's been a while since I started to look for this game. But still - only these moneybags from Ebay with their extremely high price. Hotel Dusk was so awesome!

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